AI Hybrid Photography for Advertising | Dale May, New York
AI HYBRID PHOTOGRAPHY
Every image in this section starts with a real person in front of Dale May's camera, lit for a world that didn't exist yet. AI builds that world. Environments, skies, architecture, and in a few frames the crowd behind the subject are generated, then directed, composited, relit, and retouched until the photograph and its surroundings read as a single exposure. This is AI-assisted advertising photography with one rule: technology serves the image, it never authors it.
Some of these frames began as commissions. Studio portraits of Christina Aguilera, originally shot for Shure, and two portraits from a Prevention Magazine assignment were reimagined as personal work, with entirely new worlds built around the original photography. Two of the Prevention images, Inner Peace and The Accidental Tourist, were selected for Lürzer's Archive 200best Digital Artists 2026/27. The rest started as personal ideas: a face, a light, and a place no location scout could find.
For a look at how the AI production workflow runs, read the AI Workflow page. For work where the environment was built by hand in Blender 3D, see CGI Hybrid Photography & Photoreal Environments.